When Arlene Kramer Richards writes about “The Female Oedipus Complex” (2025), she demonstrates an unusual courage in addressing a theoretical and clinical issue that for many remains controversial, rejected, passe, or completely forgotten. The idea of the Oedipus complex is built upon the stratification of consciousness and unconsciousness, the theory of infantile sexuality, and object relations in the life of the child in the context of the family. Yet each of these foundational ideas have been dismissed or repressed, even in many quarters of modern psychoanalysis. But they've certainly not been dismissed or repressed in Arlene's thinking.
Kramer Richards couches her discussion in psychoanalytic history from Freud's first speculations about the girl's “penis envy as bedrock and suppression of the clitoris as ideal adulthood” to the “present day emphasis on relationships, variability, and individuality” (p. 106). She cites alternative theorists who have proposed alternative paths to adulthood for women based on different identifications and object choices in relation to parents and parenting figures. These alternative paths have proposed different mythic metaphors, such as the myths of Electra and Persephone. The alternative theories are often of great complexity and may well describe the clinical experience of the theorist or the experience of the theorist herself. But in a refreshing paragraph Kramer Richards writes:
“All of this hypothesizes a degree of fantasizing and sophistication of logic characteristic of a psychoanalyst, but, I submit, not of an infant, toddler, or even a three- to six-year-old child. The cognitive capacity demonstrated by this tour de force of reasoning is beyond that of adolescence, even in the most brilliant child. Attributing such mental gyrations to a young child is not supported by any evidence I know of” (pp. 7–8, this volume).
These are the words of someone who obviously knows about children—-and not just from reading about them. Kramer Richards speaks in the experience near terms of attachments, the desire to be loved, feelings, identifications, and the importance of being seen and understood. She says:
The Oedipal conflict is determined by the universal experience of attachment to the early nurturer, partly by the infant's genetic endowment, partly by parental characteristics, partly by parental fantasies of the child, personality, and partly by the cultural expectations and restrictions that the child is born into (p. 13, this volume).
We read this and suddenly feel a sense of freedom. Kramer Richards is reminding us that theory is not the same as life, “the map is not the territory.” There are multiple maps. And while the maps can be useful, what is important, clinically, is the path taken by the individual, the benefits of that path, and a curiosity about the paths, or roads, not taken. This is where we find old hurts, untapped potential, and new opportunities for a wider, fuller experience of life.
The Oedipus complex first dawned on Freud in his personal analysis when he recalled his childhood love for his mother and his hatred for his father. He then associated it with the basic theme of Sophocles' legend of Oedipus Rex. Around the same time, the 1890s, Freud was struggling with the etiology of hysteria. With his seduction theory he concluded that the “event” of child seduction by an adult resulted in hysteria. Later, with his new theory of infantile sexuality, Freud recognized that the causative factor of psychological disturbance was not the “event” of seduction but rather the “experience” of seduction, and that experience could be caused by an adult seducer or a combination of an adult caretaker and the child's own sexual fantasies. Freud was moving from the physical to the mental, from the brain to the mind, from the event to the experience. He did not deny that children were traumatized by seductions; he was noting that in some situations the trauma resulted from a combination of normal caretaking and the child's normal sexual fantasies. In some situations, normal caretaking might not cross the line into sexual seduction or molestation but still might be sufficiently overstimulating to awaken the child's natural sexual fantasy life to a problematic level.
We have all had patients who were not molested but had parents who were seductive, overstimulating, inappropriate, or blurred generational difference. I am reminded of a girl who became uncomfortably aware of her father's leering eyes when she wore a bikini, of a boy who hated shopping for clothes as his mother always uncomfortably checked the fit of his pants by putting her hand just inside the waistband and pulling on it, of a divorced father who routinely asked his adult daughter to buy sexy lingerie as gifts for his girlfriends, and of a mother who bought her adult son all of his underwear, including sexy underwear, well into adulthood. These examples of Oedipal themes playing out from childhood into adulthood often lead to suffering of various forms in adult sexual development.
From early in his career, Freud noted the remarkable similarity between the images and themes in dreams and fantasies of individuals and the legends and mythologies of ancient cultures. The legend of Oedipus Rex was embraced by psychoanalysis and turned into a point of orientation from which analysts have mined new insights for over a century. In Totem and Taboo Freud imagined the Oedipal scene taking place in prehistoric societies. He said that in prehistoric times a primal despotic father ruled over a small band of people, kept all the females for himself, drove off his adult sons, and battled them when they tried to take his place. Eventually the sons killed the father, delighted in their victory, cannibalized him, and then mourned the loss of their father. Freud said people did this over and over until the repeated event became an archaic memory that is now remembered in our modern minds as the Oedipus complex.
But people do not remember the events that took place in the lives of their ancestors. This one flaw in his theory got in the way of Totem and Taboo receiving broader acceptance among psychoanalysts and anthropologists. It is more parsimonious to say we are primates, and we have primate social instincts, including alpha male dynamics that are the basis of the Oedipus complex. Another primate social instinct is copulation interference. Chimpanzee babies stay close to their mothers for years. When the chimpanzee mother copulates, her child will commonly climb onto her back and try to push off the copulating male. This behavior
by the chimpanzee youngster is curiously tolerated up until a certain age when a taboo against this interference is enforced by the male with open aggression. We can see some of this dynamic even in humans when young parents are hugging or kissing and their young children come in between to separate them, take one of the parents for himself or herself, or just share in the hug.
But why is the great mystery of the soul for all humans written only in a Greek legend? Did the ancient Greeks hold the secrets of the soul? Do other cultures generate myths and legends of a similar character? Well, yes, they do. But before getting into all that, let's first recognize the basic components of the legend of Oedipus Rex that align with the behavior of children in families. To begin with we see the incest wish and the incest taboo, and the patricidal wish and the patricidal taboo. The wishes, whether conscious or unconscious, are recognized as universal and so are the taboos, even in chimpanzees.
For any of us to even begin to understand psychoanalysis, we must learn to think in metaphor. With regard to the Oedipus complex, the mother is a metaphor for the provision of instinctual gratification; the father is a metaphor for setting limits, educating, imposing rules and laws, and establishing values and institutions; castration is a metaphor for the action of the fathering figure in limit setting; penis envy is a metaphor for wanting the social power of the other. Thus, the Oedipus complex is a metaphor for socialization in which the child learns the social implications of gender difference and generational difference, establishes identifications, and constellates a superego. (Note: The father figure is typically an adult male in the life of the child, while I refer to the “fathering figure” as the person who imposes the prohibitions, sets limits, and educates the child.)
When we think in metaphor, we can see the way a mother can both mother and father her children. We can see the way a father can both father and mother his children. We can see the way gay, lesbian, single or communal parents can both mother and father their children. When the Oedipus complex is no longer Sophocles' truth or Freud's truth or anyone else's truth, it becomes a set of anatomical and developmental
markers around which each person finds their own truth and their own suffering in the context of their family.
Returning to the question, why should a Greek legend be the one around which the psyches of all humanity are organized? The answer, in brief, is it's not. Oedipal themes are found in myths, legends, and folktales all around the world. The themes of dangerous impulses and society's taboos instituted to protect us from them are ubiquitous. There are many myths that are as transparent in their incestuous and murderous family dynamics as the story of Oedipus and many more that only thinly disguise those dynamics.
Sophocles' legend of Oedipus Rex debuted on stage in 529 BCE, but the story components were even more ancient and were part of many folktales that preexisted Oedipus Rex. In Lowell Edmunds's book Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and Its Later Analogues (1985), we learn of similar medieval folktales from Turkey, Israel, Iraq, and a Sufi sect in the Sudan. One could easily suggest that the story components of the legend of Oedipus Rex may have been diffused throughout the region, but the further removed geographically, the more compelling are the similarities. Edmunds also found analogous tales among the people of the Ulithi Atoll, now a part of Micronesia; among the Zulus in Africa; among the Malagasy of Madagascar; and among the people of the Antilles in the Caribbean Sea.
When such story components are shared far and wide, we can consider the possibility of diffusion of those components through human contact but must also consider the possibility of a pan-human narrative similar to the ubiquity of hero myths and creation myths, which appear in all human cultures. Even if communities in Micronesia, Africa, or the Antilles heard these stories from visitors, why would they have incorporated them into their own folktales? The answer, as Freud said of Oedipus, is that the story components move us because they find resonance in our own impulses:
His [Oedipus's] destiny moves us only because it might have been ours—because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse toward our mother and our first hatred and
Page 23our first murderous wish against our father (Freud, , SE, IV, p. 262–263).
The story was made up or picked up by cultures far and wide because people around the world recognized themselves within it.
Take, for example, the symbolism of the Chinese dragon. Huaiyu Wang (2015) says the image of the Chinese dragon is more than 5,000 years old. In modern times the dragon is well known to be an auspicious figure that brings good luck, but early Chinese beliefs associated the dragon with the demonic and saw it as an omen of misfortune and disaster. The auspicious and the demonic aspects in the same figure remind us of the psychoanalytic insight that ambivalent attitudes characterize many of our human relations. Wang traces dragon worship into the distant past and identifies the dragon with both the father and the king. He then explains that the ambivalent feelings related to the father and king were managed with rules, laws, prohibitions, and taboos.
Furthermore, Wang explains that Fu Xi and Nu Wa are the mythological ancestors of the Chinese people. They represent yin and yang, as husband and wife but also as brother and sister. Images of Fu Xi and Nu Wa with intertwined serpentine bodies have led Wang to conclude that the serpent bodies of Fu Xi and Nu Wa symbolize two dragons engaged in intercourse. Thus, the dragon contains all the ambivalent feelings of love and hate, affection and resentment, as are also seen in the legend of Oedipus. The dragon is also associated with incest, but unlike the mother-son incest of the Oedipus legend, the pair of Chinese dragons (Fu Xi and Nu Wa) engage in brother-sister incest. In these reflections Wang helps us to see how Chinese dragon worship receives and contains ambivalent feelings of love and hate and symbolizes a conflict between primitive impulses and society's prohibitions. In this way we can see that Chinese dragon worship is also a metaphor for socialization. It represents right order upheld by the king against the repressed primitive impulses that threaten to bring chaos.
Another correlate to the themes of patricide and the taboo against patricide is found in the Chinese legend of Nezha. The tale's ancient roots are 2,000 years old, but it was written in its classic modern form 400 years ago. It is the story of a mischievous and rebellious boy, Nezha, who is in
constant mortal combat with his father, General Li Jing. At its heart is the boy's conflict in relation to his father. He harbors anger and resentment toward his father as well as a moral obligation to respect his father as his father. The father hated Nezha from his birth for being ugly and then, later, for bringing problems to the family and for the endless battles with his father. Meir Shahar (2015) writes, “Subversion of authority is the key to the Nezha myth” (p. 5). He explains that Chinese culture places a high value on filial piety in the private realm and loyalty in the political sphere (p. 5). Filial piety means the child behaves dutifully, respectfully, and gratefully toward the parents, and loyalty means the citizens behave subserviently and deferentially toward the ruler or ruling class. While filial piety and loyalty are cultural values that are consciously embraced, they naturally conceal the anger and resentments of the son toward the father and those of the citizenry toward the rulers and ruling class.
In other cultures, the son's love for the mother and hatred for the father are echoed in myths of the separation of the world parents. In a Polynesian creation myth, for example, Rangi, who was heaven and the father, was lying on top of Papa, who was earth and the mother. They had children, but because Rangi was lying on top of Papa, there was no light, only darkness. So, the children made a plan to tear them apart. Tane-mahuta put his head on his mother and then, with his feet, he thrust his father up into the skies, high up into the heavens, letting in the light. “No sooner was heaven rent from earth than the multitude of human beings were discovered whom they had begotten, and who had hitherto lain concealed between the bodies of Rangi and Papa” (Long, 1963, p. 93).
In an Egyptian cosmogony, the interfering son is displaced by an interfering father:
The goddess of heaven, Nut, was still lying upon her spouse, the earth god Seb (or Keb). Then the god of atmosphere (or air), her father Shu, shoved himself between them and lifted her up along with everything which had been created, i.e., every god with his boat (p. 99).
In a Minyong cosmogony from India, it is said that Melo, who was a man and the sky, was married to and lying on top of Sedi, who was a woman and the earth. The Wiyus, the ancestral spirits, held a meeting to consider
what they could do to keep from being crushed. One of the Wiyus caught hold of the sky and beat him, so he had to flee far into the heavens (p. 106). In these three tales the separation of the world parents gives rise to physical space and light as an analogue to the psychological space and light that comes about in the Oedipal stage of child development.
For many years Frans de Waal studied the chimpanzee colony at the Royal Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, Netherlands. He observed:
When adults start a mating session the young come rushing up. They jump on the female's back so as to be able to push her partner away or touch him, or they wiggle between the couple. They throw sand at them or, despite their size, conduct intimidation displays. In one instance, Franje's son, Fons, interfered when Nikkie mounted Franje. In this instance, Fons actually bit Nikkie's testicles. And on another occasion, involving the same triad, Fons simply approached, embraced the two and gave Nikkie a kiss (, pp. 156–158).
Some years ago, I conducted a small investigation relating to this type of behavior in humans (Benveniste, 2022). I asked the parents of young children, “What is the reaction of your child when he/she sees you and your spouse hugging and/or kissing?” I collected data on 30 children (22 boys and 8 girls). When parents were hugging or kissing, 18 of the children intervened between the two parents. Of those 18, there were 9 who actually pushed out one of the parents. The following are a few examples of the parents' replies:
MA Girl, 4 years old
She gets closer to us, and she hugs both of us and says that the three of us have to give kisses to each other. Sometimes she is jealous with her father. She says, “No, no, only me.” She wants to push me out and stay with her father.
JN Boy, 3 years 6 months
When we are kissing, he comes in between us or he says, “Give my father to me because he is mine.” And he hugs and kisses his father.
AA Girl, 7 years 2 months
She comes in the bed with us, and in the morning we wake up hugging. But she has a tendency to go more to the father but also to come in between us.
EC Boy, 2 years 1 month
When the mother kisses the father, he [the boy] says to his mother, “It's not good to kiss Daddy.” “Don't give kisses to Daddy.” And then he pulls me and takes me.
Another example of copulation interference approaches the matter in the form of a denied wish—a wish to not interfere. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Evans-Wentz, 1927/1960) is a sacred Buddhist text that prepares the soul for navigating the afterlife realms in order to stay at one with God and not be reborn into the earthly world in the cycle of suffering. The Tibetan Book of the Dead dates back to the 1300s. Walter Y. Evans-Wentz's edited translation was based on seven texts and the English translations of Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup. In the part of the text called “The Closing of the Door of the Womb,” the soul, in the realms of the afterlife, is instructed on how to avoid the cycle of rebirth:
O nobly born, at this time thou wilt see visions of males and females in union. When thou seest them, remember to withhold thyself from going between them… If at that time, one entereth into the womb through the feelings of attachment and repulsion, one may be born either as a horse, a foul, a dog, or a human being.
If [about] to be born as a male, the feeling of itself being a male dawneth upon the Knower, and a feeling of intense hatred towards the father and of jealousy and attraction towards the mother is begotten. If [about] to be born as a female the feeling of itself being a female dawneth upon the Knower, and a feeling of intense hatred towards the mother and of intense attraction and fondness towards the father is begotten (pp. 177–179).
If we can conclude anything from all of this, it is that the Oedipus complex is a pattern in human behavior embedded in primate social instincts that Freud, with his keen skills of observation, was able to discover first in himself, then in the legend of Oedipus Rex, then in his patients, and
then as an organizing myth that is essential to child development and human cultural evolution.
More than one hundred years later, Arlene Kramer Richards reminds us that the map is not the territory, and the pattern is not the person. She helps us to see the patient not simply as an example of the theory but rather as a person with dynamics that may be reflected in one theory or another or may even be the basis for generating new theories.